I got into school for nothing - 247
I got into school for nothing (247)
Lesson 48. Professor Ban Yuwon - 2
Monsters from abandoned dimensions were something even most higher-ranking dimensions wouldn't dare to touch.
This was because the unending infection waves, while perhaps not directly affecting individuals from higher-ranking dimensions, could still influence the items they carried on their persons.
Thus, it was more fitting to say they were left neglected not because they were terrifying, but because they were simply too repulsive to deal with.
That is, unless they grew mighty enough to threaten higher-ranking dimensions, breaking through the barricades erected around the dimensional walls and spilling out into external dimensions.
When monster waves continued within a sealed dimension, everything that constituted that dimension would become monstrous. They would then fight among themselves, devouring one another and growing, slowly dwindling their numbers over long ages.
Eventually, grotesque beings would emerge, their forms so distorted and mixed with the characteristics of various monsters and objects that their original shapes were unrecognizable. Such monsters were called chimeras.
They were troublesome to fight, and even if one managed to defeat them, the forcibly fused monster factors would explode and dissipate, leaving no trace of a corpse and merely unleashing powerful infection waves. Thus, there was absolutely no benefit to be gained from them.
As time passed, such chimeras would fuse together again, beginning to swell their bodies to an even greater size. At this point, they became less like monsters and more akin to a natural phenomenon.
Something like a giant sphere, devouring everything around it like a black hole....
It was called a Chimera Ball.
Ban Yuwon was horrified as he faced the Chimera Balls, the smallest of which measured a staggering 100 meters in diameter, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu.
“Could it be that what I said earlier about giant space monsters was a foreshadowing...!”
“The Chancellor is crazy. To push such monsters onto Academy students, as if Exodus wasn't enough, he can only be described as a madman.”
Aire spat out, spreading mana imbued with frost in all directions, blocking the movement of the spheres.
At the core of the frost she wielded lay the power of deceleration.
The powerful frost, capable of slowing all forms of movement, was one of the most potent means of suppressing infection waves. Even now, the Chimera Balls, which had been approaching the spaceship carrying Ban Yuwon's party, had come to a halt as if they had struck an immense barrier.
“Ah, Yuwon, you’re here?! Now I can kill them without worry!”
“Seriously, where were all these giant masses hiding?”
“Half of the Exodus fleet was devoured by these things.”
Until the spaceship carrying Ban Yuwon's party arrived here, the Exodus bastards had been holding the Chimera Balls back by using bait imbued with mana from higher-ranking dimensions—something the Chimera Balls loved most. They had lured them to one side and, it seemed, devised a plan to use them to pressure Ban Yuwon's party.
However, by Ban Yuwon reversing Woohyeolrin's curse, the entire Exodus fleet became entangled, and only then did the Chimera Balls, regaining their senses, begin devouring the exposed and defenseless Exodus.
In other words, the rapid annihilation of the Exodus fleet was greatly influenced by this astonishing combination of events.
“If we just blow them up, we’ll be engulfed by the monsters’ mana! Unless we induce a mana reaction to disperse them....”
“If it's Kshana, who controls magical sound waves, then maybe...!”
The club members who had belatedly emerged from the spaceship and confirmed the appearance of the Chimera Balls muttered with serious expressions.
But the other Rebellion members—Dokgo Yeon, Asha, and Aire—were relentlessly attacking, searching for the core that constituted the monsters, ignoring the infection waves and everything else.
“Then they’ll explode! Too dangerous—Ah.”
Kshana, who had been trying to stop them in fright, stopped speaking as she watched the death aura Dokgo Yeon fired penetrate the center of a giant Chimera Ball.
And anticipating the massive explosion that would occur the next moment, she hastily tried to fire a sound wave, but before that, Ban Yuwon, who saw it, shouted.
“Yeon, don’t destroy everything, leave some for me!”
“I knew you’d say that.”
The death aura neatly severed and annihilated only the life force sustaining the Chimera Ball.
The explosive power caused by the collapse of the giant sphere, the immense infection waves—all of it was converted into strings of concepts and absorbed into Ban Yuwon’s outstretched hand.
[You have gained Life (生) 1, Won-gi (元氣) 1, Fusion (融合) 127, Collapse (崩壞) 18. Fusion and Collapse are concepts that living beings cannot possess.]
No way... To think it could be this delicious.
Ban Yuwon’s eyes sparkled as he confirmed that his ‘Life’, which had just reached 1,000, increased by 1 to become 1,001.
As could be roughly guessed from its sheer size and monstrous abilities, it was a massive chunk of experience points. On top of that, he had also obtained a large quantity of higher-tier concepts: Fusion and Collapse!
He speculated that the core concept forming the Chimera Ball was Fusion, and that the forcibly maintained Fusion, losing its life force, explosively collapsed and was on the verge of turning back into infection waves.
However, thanks to Ban Yuwon conceptualizing it without delay, the infection waves vanished, and it was divided into Fusion and Collapse, then absorbed.
“Woah, whoa....”
When an explosion capable of annihilating an entire city in a lower-ranking dimension vanished without a trace with a simple wave of Ban Yuwon’s hand, the club members, including Kshana, were once again struck by his absurdly unfair power and fell silent.
While the club members still felt a mix of astonishment and sadness that they had, as Exodus members, once targeted Ban Yuwon’s life, seeing what Ban Yuwon had just done... made those who had already perished seem a bit pathetic for ever thinking of fighting him.
“Yuwon, I’m sending one too!”
“Sending? What....”
Asha, who had instantly extended the length of her True Dragon Spear by several tens of meters, firmly packed mana into its shaft and powerfully struck a Chimera Ball, sending it flying.
If a slender girl were to throw the 63 Building, would it feel like this?
It wasn't even a baseball, and yet she handled a ball the size of a building with such ease. Ban Yuwon stretched out his hand towards it, utterly flabbergasted.
Just before the Chimera Ball, hurtling ferociously towards Ban Yuwon, collided with him, the mana injected at the moment of impact with the True Dragon Spear exploded internally!
[You have gained Life (生) 1, Won-gi (元氣) 2, Fusion (융합) 135, Collapse (崩壞) 11.]
“Nice catch!”
“That was....”
Ban Yuwon, who had retrieved the concepts with perfect timing, narrowed his eyes as he watched Asha preparing to launch a second shot from afar.
That girl seemed to have been scolded too little, and as he pondered what new nickname he should give her tonight, Aire was staring at him intently.
“What, what’s wrong?”
“I want to do it too. Catch it well.”
“......?”
Aire, who had created a gigantic pillar of ice, fired it into space.
He wondered what her goal was, but an ice pillar, continually increasing in length until it stretched several kilometers horizontally, pierced through several Chimera Balls, then changed direction and flew towards Ban Yuwon.
It was an unimaginable technique, as it avoided having its mana absorbed by the Chimera Balls, ended their life force, and even momentarily bound them to prevent an explosion. But Ban Yuwon, rather than admiring it, was busy extracting concepts from the ice pillar that exploded before his eyes and the Chimera Balls that, stimulated by it, exploded in succession.
[You have gained Life (生) 3, Won-gi (元氣) 5, Fusion (융합) 359, Collapse (崩壞) 37.]
Ban Yuwon, who had collected the concepts without delay, looked at Aire with a cold glare, but she chuckled with satisfaction and began to craft another ice pillar.
What was truly incomprehensible was that Dokgo Yeon watched it with a displeased expression and then started moving even faster.
In the end, Ban Yuwon found himself undertaking the hardcore mission of receiving hundreds of meters-sized Chimera Balls pouring in from three directions simultaneously, all before they could explode.
“What on earth are those guys competing over?”
“Heh heh, how cute.”
“I’m scared, though....”
Kshana once again shivered as she watched the Chimera Balls, capable of bringing disaster not only to lower-ranking dimensions but potentially even to higher-ranking ones, being treated like baseballs imbued with love for Ban Yuwon.
The horrific infection waves caused by Chimera Balls and the massive explosions that occurred whenever they were killed—how to deal with these was the key point of this dimension purification competition. And yet, they were competing over how splendidly and how many Chimera Balls they could throw.
But... if that was the case.
“Me too, I want to do it too!”
Kshana’s twisted competitive spirit was ignited.
“Kshana!”
“We’ll help you!”
“With Kshana’s Authority, you can do it!”
The special admissions members, formed around Kshana, bravely charged towards the Chimera Balls.
Indeed, her Authority, which controlled waves by emitting sound, was optimized for dealing with chimeras. With the added power of the other members, it was possible to toss them to Ban Yuwon at the opportune moment, just before they lost their life force and exploded.
“Catch it, Junior Yuwon!”
“Don’t compete!”
Chimera Balls always moved in search of something they could devour.
Without even needing to travel through the abandoned dimension by spaceship, the monsters voluntarily gathered around them, and so the special competition, originally scheduled for two days, ended in less than half a day.
The result was, without question, a victory for the Union Journey Club.
Of course, the Rebellion members accounted for almost 90% of the achievement, but the club members, each having awakened their abilities, and above all, Kshana’s Authority, which displayed absolute power against the Chimera Balls, had been flaunted across all dimensions. So it could be said that their initial objective had been achieved.
[Fusion (융합) 1,655, Collapse (崩壞) 437]
And the two core concepts obtained from the Chimera Balls, after countless aggregations, had reached their highest level ever in terms of depth alone.
Inside the spaceship returning to Union, as Ban Yuwon looked at them, pondering where to use them, Cellon asked via telepathy.
[I have a question. What’s the difference between Synthesis and Fusion?]
Synthesis was the top-tier concept obtained after clearing the Orc Wave caused by the fragments of the previous Follower of Ten Thousand Kalpas.
Ban Yuwon explained simply.
“Synthesis is the state of being combined and complete. Fusion is the phenomenon of combining itself. To be precise, that’s how I interpret it.”
[That’s a very dangerous concept. Don’t even bring it out by mistake.]
“Dangerous means useful, doesn’t it? From now on, it might be good to actively seek out abandoned dimensions.”
In fact, Ban Yuwon, looking at the Code Core containing those two concepts, was recalling the conversation he had earlier when confronting Woohyeolrin.
He firmly believed that because of the dimensional walls dividing dimensions, the mana density of each dimension differed, and the root of all evil was Union, which created those dimensional walls.
That was surely a lie, but... he felt there must be a special reason for monster waves to ultimately reach the phenomenon of Fusion.
Perhaps the reason the dimensional walls were created was....
“Haaah....”
The Ten Great Families, the Chancellor, dimensional walls, dimension pirates... and the Tower.
Ban Yuwon felt that he was slowly approaching the universe’s secrets.
It was a secret too heavy for a mere first-year Academy student to bear, but for him, who had resolved to become the owner of the Tower of Babel, it was also a matter he naturally had to accept.
‘Anyway, I’ve dealt with everything directly in front of me. As promised with Cellon... now it’s time for solo exploration.’
His eyes sharpened, and just as he nodded then.
“Yu-Yuwon!”
Asha shrieked and clung to his arm.
Feeling a sensation incomparable to when she was a man before, he turned to find Asha’s tear-filled face right before his nose.
“The exam is the week after next! I don’t remember studying at all!”
“Don’t keep using your dark past as a convenient excuse. You wouldn’t have studied anyway.”
At Ban Yuwon’s chiding, Aire, who was drinking tea beside him, quietly added.
“If you’re a great founding hero, Union’s exams would be nothing to you.”
“I didn’t found a nation!”
Ban Yuwon, consoling Asha who was tearfully clinging to his embrace, inwardly clicked his tongue in exasperation.
Now that he thought about it, he had completely forgotten that he had to take the midterm exams before doing his solo exploration.
...Now that he had finally returned to a student-like environment, he felt a slight sense of relief.
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